Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Goose Gander
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 01:25 PM

"Seems the ideal place for such recordings is on-line, as with the Max Hunter Folk Song Collection - freely available to one and all, with complete notes."

Max Hunter is only 'free' because someone else paid to catalogue and digitize the collection, and continues to pay to keep up the site, etc. Given that the site is hosted by Missouri State University, I imagine there is public money involved. Not so much of that around for folk music, I'm afraid. So an online subscription service may be the way forward. It remains to be seen whether smug and feckless 'everything should be free' downloaders will be willing to pay for something they feel is a privilege.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Howard Jones
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 12:13 PM

The Tatlock article is very interesting. The technology is here, we can't ignore it and must adapt to it. However I'm not convinced that the models which may work for pop records necessarily translate to the folk world, where the market is much smaller.

Firstly, there is the older demographic of folk fans, many of whom don't like downloading and who still prefer to buy CDs. They also like to listen to their music on a stereo, rather than on a computer or MP3 player. So although legal downloading offers the potential for more sales, in reality this is likely to be limited.

Secondly, most folk artists sell most of their CDs at gigs. If you have to ask someone to go home and download it, you've lost the impetus and quite possibly the sale. You need a physical product to sell face-to-face. The margins on small-scale CD production are small and easily eroded by illegal downloads.

Thirdly, giving away CDs on-line in order to attract people to live gigs doesn't work for the small scale events where most folk artists perform. For the average performer the fees from live gigs aren't big enough to compensate for the loss of CD sales.

So, how can we make it work?

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: the Folk Police
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 12:03 PM

Steady on, old chap!

Seriously, we'd throw our hat in the ring if others would too. Could call for a separate "call to arms" thread?

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 10:45 AM

Here we have total agreement - and maybe a subscription fee donated to the collecting, annotating, archiving and making available all the other recordings and mss. rotting away in peoples' attics

I think we owe it to the world to do this. And if anyone out there needs assistance in digitising their precious field-recorded archives of priceless field recordings then I'd consider it both an honour & a true labour of true love. And I know just the label we could do it in conjunction with too - an up & coming venture known as Folk Police Recordings whose heart is very much in the right place...

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 10:33 AM

Interesting article by John Tatlock on the Quietus website pertinent to this thread: A Decade in Music Filesharing Post Napster: Myths of the Digital Age

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Uncle Rumpo
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 09:48 AM

thank you Jim,

NOW you've reached the eminently valuable conclusion that makes this thread very valid and interesting again.


if its not too naive..

An annual percentage levied on BT and all other internet providers's fat profiteering would be a good starting point
for establishing a permanent subsidy for some kind of well organised and resourced
voluntary sector public digitising and archiving social/cultural/ folk history download library movement.

perhaps.. ???

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: brezhnev
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 09:28 AM

Guest TIP said: "But I'd especially invite any responses that seriously consider the possibilities that the evolving world of information- and music-distribution offer, and look for ways to make the best of it... Isn't it time we started looking for solutions?"

Definitely. There are already half a dozen people on this thread (including Jim C and SO'P) who seem to think an online subscription archive might be a good plan and may be up for trying to do something about it.

A place to start could be to ask the record labels what their plans are for the stuff they're holding and not planning to release. and whether they might consider collaborating with each other and/or willing enthusiasts to make it available online. and if not, why not?

www.folkster.org is available. anyone got 10.99 plus VAT handy?

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 05:49 AM

"Seems the ideal place for such recordings is on-line,"
Here we have total agreement - and maybe a subscription fee donated to the collecting, annotating, archiving and making available all the other recordings and mss. rotting away in peoples' attics.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 05:49 AM

By my reckoning, on a 53-year revival cycle, that means we were due another in 2009...

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 05:13 AM

"I thought the revival kicked off in 1903"
The present revival started around 1956.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 04:17 AM

The revival kicked off in the 1950s and right up to the 90s it was still possible to select a club and go and listen to a night of folk music and song well performed in most parts of Britain - hardly a brief generationally isolated flowering.

I thought the revival kicked off in 1903 when C# had his Epiphany upon hearing John England's singing of Seeds of Love? Actually there's a touching illustration of this seminal moment in The Ladybird Book of Music if anyone has a copy at hand. Classic stuff! The moment the indigenous music of the working class intersected with the cultural sensibilities of the bourgeoisie who've been trying to sanitise it ever since.

Sorry - I believed for one foolish minute that the scrabble for fair play for the performers might - just might have included the people who gave us our raw material - should have known better!!

Abso-fecking-lutely; this has been my point all along here. As I said back on 04 Jan 10 - 05:22 AM:

Seems odd for a music founded on the bootlegging of Traditional Singers to take such a high attitude to bootlegging in general. It still goes on - The Voice of the People series, and the forthcoming CDs from The Kennedy Archive - material hitherto knocked out on shoddy cassettes & CD-R editions for top-whack. Seems the ideal place for such recordings is on-line, as with the Max Hunter Folk Song Collection - freely available to one and all, with complete notes. But no; we'll get them packaged up in deluxe digitally remastered re-edited editions purporting to be an improvement on the Kennedy editions - and available only to those who are prepared to shell out top-whack all over again...

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 08:07 PM

Whoops - too fast on the posting finger.
CS
"So I'm not so sure that the 60's revival really was much more than a brief generationally isolated flowering"
The revival kicked off in the 1950s and right up to the 90s it was still possible to select a club and go and listen to a night of folk music and song well performed in most parts of Britain - hardly a brief generationally isolated flowering.
Nowadays the choice of what you listen to has been all but surgically removed - but it's still very much a part of the original revival; a handful of the people who were in at or relatively near the beginning; Killen, Reg Hall, Anne Briggs, Carthy, Peggy Seeger..... are still very much with us.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 07:54 PM

"well this had been quite an interesting and relatively constructive thread."
Sorry - I believed for one foolish minute that the scrabble for fair play for the performers might - just might have included the people who gave us our raw material - should have known better!!

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 04:41 PM

With brief reference to the err 'post revival' thingummy, I'd suggest my own experience fits in pretty well in with that notion. Being a baby of the Seventies, the Sixties boom in commercial folk music completely and utterly passed me by without so much as a fiddle de day. Indeed it was only on researching "traditional English song" online sometime around Hallowe'en 2008 (which I accidentally stumbled on as a consequence of researching Sean Nos) that it dawned on me that old bands like Steeleye Span (who I had a faint disinterested awareness of, in the way one has a faint disinterested awareness of a half empty packet of stale custard creams that have forever resided at the back of your Nan's pantry) didn't actually write all their own songs like other bands!
On discussing my err discovery of traditional song with my peers in their thirties and fourties, it would appear that the Sixties revival has barely left a dent in the consciousness of the majority of people of my generation. No-body I know (outside of fellow members of this virtual community) either has any glimmer of awareness of traditional folk song, or has ever had any interest in 60's folk bands. So I'm not so sure that the 60's revival really was much more than a brief generationally isolated flowering, that essentially faded and withered away decades ago, though with reference to this thread, arguably blogs might now be helping to turn that around?

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Uncle Rumpo
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 01:56 PM

well this had been quite an interesting and relatively constructive thread..

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 12:22 PM

"areas of experimental rock, jazz, free improvisation & early classical,"
I assume we can add this to your definition of folk - don't make your list too long, it's more than unmanagable enough.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Dennis
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 11:47 AM

Ah! I see Mudcat Law # 56 has been reached: A thread shall have reached it's natural end when Suibhne O'Piobaireachd & Jim Carroll start blowing their dull virtual raspberries at one another.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Stu
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 11:37 AM

I really really like The Electric Light Orchestra.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 11:06 AM

I suggest you trawl through some of his past postings to see him debunking and devaluing traditional singers by lumping their songs in with those produced by our predatory music industry.

You see it as a devaluation, Jim; I see it as an appreciation of creative musical process in terms of genre, the processes of one are no different to any other. Our Predatory Music Industry has not only given us some of the greatest music of all time, but continues to ensure great music continues to be produced. You may not like (I may not like it) but it lives and breathes in precisely the same way as The Tradition once did and which The Revival, sadly, doesn't. Over on the other the thread MtheGM said: When Child called his collection 'The English & Scottish Popular Ballads', he certainly did not mean what would nowadays be called 'popular' [or 'pop'] songs.

Here's my response in full, albeit without the HTML:

Thanks, MtheGM - this actually distracted me from my more pressing concerns last night & lulled me into nice sleepy reverie in which it occurred to me that the use of Popular in both senses is exactly the same. There has been some sterling discussion on the wellsprings of the Big Boys from the - er - Big Boys (Jim, Brian et al) which has shed light on the nature of an essentially creative vernacular tradition in which ballads were wrought by virtue of an idiomatic mastery in precisely the same way pop songs are today. Jim has even suggested many ballads were, in effect, free-styled, which wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, given that free-styling is often the mark of true mastery in many narrative idioms - from Hip-Hop to that of the Serbian bards.

The essential difference would appear to be one of transmission. Time was the only available recording media was Human Memory - which comes supplied with a pair of excellent stereo binaural microphones and, as is supposed, near perfect recall especially when used in a (mainly) non-technological culture where people are more creative by default - thus playback is apt to emphasise the idiosyncratic nature of the thing. In terms of sampling and remixing of existing material there is evidence enough of the sort of fluidic mastery I've been arguing for elsewhere with respect of Folk Song. This is the exact same mastery that would have been commonplace in the trades of the time, so it shouldn't surprise us that ordinary people (so-called) were making & singing these songs any more than a so-called ordinary person (such as a Susan Boyle or an Alfie Boe) can capture the hearts of millions today with what is, in essence, a natural born talent defined by the traditions of their respective cultures.

The nature of Popular Music in both senses is Idiomatically Creative - the idiom being the very wellspring of its creativity, which is the actual germ of The Tradition, determined as it is by the prevailing Zeitgeist which on one hand gives us The Ballad Tradition and on the other The Hip-Hop / Rap Tradition. Both of which are Popular Traditional Musics in precisely the same sense - but neither are Folk as both the common usage of the term and its 1954 Definition renders it essentially meaningless*. Thus whilst we might lose ourselves pondering What is Folk? - or indeed Does Folk Exist? - the nature of Popular Music remains pretty constant throughout history even unto this day - applying equally to the ballads Child included in his collection and to the music we call Pop in all its myriad forms. Both are the results of living traditions of vernacular mastery and creativity - and both are a perfect reflection of the human society in which they were / are created.

S O'P

* As indicated elsewhere the folkloric understanding of the term community has expanded to the extent that the use of the term in the 1954 Definition becomes so nebulous as to make The Horse Definition look pretty exacting by comparison. Thus Folk is either nothing or everything...

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 10:35 AM

Meanwhile, awaiting the boiler man before I can put the heating on...

"The Post-Revival" is a figment of the imagination of people who seem to believe themselves part of a living tradition. As Smedley suggested, it appears to be a term of your own imaginings.

You're correct on one point there, Jim - I only came up with the term on Sunday (whilst wandering the well-pruned winter rose garden in Blackpool's Stanley Park) but I think the Post-Revival is a real enough as a cultural phenomenon with respect of Folk Music. Amongst other things, it encapsulates the experience of those younger folkies (such as myself, born as recently as 1961..) who came to The Tradition via certain aspects of The Revival and found therein something of considerable significance - far greater, in fact, than anything The Revival had to offer - real music in fact. My cultural back-ground is primarily in areas of experimental rock, jazz, free improvisation & early classical, disciplines which lead, invariably, to an appreciation of Ethnomusicology and Folk Music proper. This, in turn, leads to a wider understanding of musical possibility and cultural action which exists at odds to the innate conservatism of The Revival - which I most certainly do not dismiss out of hand, only in terms of a personal polemic that clarifies my particular stance.

The communities that created our traditional songs and music have long moved on and are now passive recipients of their culture.

No individual is a passive recipient of culture, Jim; this is as patronising as it is absurd. Granted you have your personal agendas & experiences on such matters, but only as an outsider looking in on such communities, valuing things according to your subjective desires without appreciation the wider anthropological issues. In this respect, I'm afraid to say, you sound like rather like WAV. You wanted the songs, they wanted the TV. In the end, which is more important - the people or the residual aspects of a former cultural era?

What now passes for folk is a part of a revival of the material that they left us - if we don't get our heads around that fact we will have sqandered even that.

I disagree. It's moved on beyond the revival - maybe it did so many years ago - and found an entirely different level of cultural currency with many younger people, such as myself, see above, for whom The Revival has consequently become, by and large, anametha because of it being founded on a highly conservative aesthetical orthodoxy which is something we don't find in The Tradition. There are many reasons for this, but central to what I'm now calling the Post-Revival is a moving away from the revival conservative orthodoxy and seeking out something of the fire that still blazes in both the music, and the communities who still cherish it.      

Stop whingeing and live with it.

Like you do, you mean? God knows what New Year's Resolution you've made here, Jim but I'm really beginning to worry...

Because you appear to neither like nor understand folk music proper - as amply demonstrated by your constant self-promotion.

On the contrary, it's because I love Folk Music Proper that the increasingly bland MOR affectations of revival depress me so much, a circumstance which necessitates & inspires the Post-Revival. I've been feeling the same way for years - even back in 1983 when I was renting a house off a taxidermist and I hung a label around the neck of one of her stuffed cormorants declaring it a monument to the Folk Revival. As for self-promotion; most people who know me complain I don't do enough, but the stuff I link to around here is not by way of self-promotion as such, more by way of giving example & joining in a virtual singaround wherein all things are equal with respect of what we do & why we do it. I love watching Dick's stuff, hearing Crow Sister, Ralphie, and Virginia Tam etc. and wish more people would do the same. If I sing in a singaround, which I do quite a lot, I do so not to promote myself, but because I feel the essential experience of Tradition Song is communally informal, yet once evoked, the spirit remains potent enough to effect some serious communion, and not just in the choruses either.

The essence of the Post-Revival is the Inclusivity & Celebration of of Individuality & Idiosyncrasy; I am but one individual, part of the Human Community as indeed we all are. Let's start seeing the trees here; for all too long all we've been seeing is the fecking wood.

*

SOP's argument, if I understand it, is that because material was "plundered" from the traditional sources (itself debatable) then its being plundered in turn by music sharers is justifiable. I don't believe that's a valid argument.

That's more what Jim's saying. What I'm saying is that plundering & sampling is the essence of all Folk Music. In the Tradition we call The Folk Process; in the Revival we call it Collecting. The difference being is that The Folk Process is a living breathing - er - process, whilst collecting is just taxidermy. Get this though: Both were done with The Very best of Intentions out of a deep Love of The Music. Please mark that, Howard - because file sharing is done with very best of intentions too. Music will out; it lives and breathes beyond any commodity status we might like to subject it to. No one can claim exclusive rights to their life's work simply because everything we do came from somewhere else in the first place.

Anyway, the boiler man has gone, now I can put the heating on.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 10:21 AM

"When a traditional singer gives a song to a collector it has cost him nothing"
Howard - you obviously haven't experienced the hospitality, friendship unstinting time and effort received from traditional singers.
I cringe to think of the times we've turned up at somebody's home with a tape-recorder and found the whole family saving the hay, milking the cows, planting.... Yet I can't recall one single occasion when, despite our efforts to make another more convenient date, we have been turned away.
Or our having turned up at a Travellers site to record people who have virtually nothing, and having the family feed you or give you drink - and take offence when you attempt to bring your own, or pay them for their efforts.
Before he was discovered Walter Pardon spent around thirty years of painstaking effort assembling his family repertoire - he never once refused to share it with us, or anybody else.
That people choose to adapt and sell on the songs that they have been so generously given is their own choice. A remake of a traditional song by a revival performer is the the end product of a few weeks/months work - songs from the Pardon/Lenihan/McCarthy/Williamson/Delaney families is the result of many generations of creative efforts on the part of those families. I wouldn't like to be the one to have to put a value on those efforts, I'm just suggesting that the source singers have had some part in their making and deserve some of the cridit.
SPLCR
"why does SO'P saying that he likes listening to traditional singers but isn't so keen on most revival singers such a problem for you?"
It isn't - if that is all he is saying I would probably agree with him to a great extent.
I suggest you trawl through some of his past postings to see him debunking and devaluing traditional singers by lumping their songs in with those produced by our predatory music industry.
"And that last sentence is just plain nasty."
You might well be right - if so, put it down to a tiredness at hearing the same old same old churned out interminably.
You will also find in his past postings a great deal of sniding at people who have researched, collected and attempted to make available the material he makes use of in his own work (from the comfort of his armchair of course).
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,SPLCR
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 09:36 AM

Jim, why does SO'P saying that he likes listening to traditional singers but isn't so keen on most revival singers such a problem for you? Seems like it's not that far from your position. And "post revival" suggests a relationship with folk music that is not particularly musically influenced by or part of the "folk revival", rather than an imagined claim to be part of a living tradition. c/f "post rock"; "post punk".

And that last sentence is just plain nasty.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Howard Jones
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 09:24 AM

Jim, there is a difference. When a traditional singer gives a song to a collector it has cost him nothing (please understand I am not denying the singer's creative effort involved) and he is losing nothing except the opportunity to exploit it for himself. Someone who produces a CD has invested a substantial amount of money in recording, mastering, producing, packaging and distribution, including paying fees for copyright where appropriate. There is a clear and immediate financial loss when someone else gives this work away for free.

I entirely agree with you that the exploitation of source singers is an appropriate subject for discussion. However, in the context of this thread I think it is a distraction. SOP's argument, if I understand it, is that because material was "plundered" from the traditional sources (itself debatable) then its being plundered in turn by music sharers is justifiable. I don't believe that's a valid argument.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 08:29 AM

"The Post-Revival" is a figment of the imagination of people who seem to believe themselves part of a living tradition. As Smedley suggested, it appears to be a term of your own imaginings.
The communities that created our traditional songs and music have long moved on and are now passive recipients of their culture.
What now passes for folk is a part of a revival of the material that they left us - if we don't get our heads around that fact we will have sqandered even that.
Stop whingeing and live with it.
"The Revival leaves me cold. Why is this??"
Because you appear to neither like nor understand folk music proper - as amply demonstrated by your constant self-promotion.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 07:13 AM

Not at all - I think Post-Revival is pretty much what a lot of us are now dealing with - as indeed some of us have been for the last 30 years or more. I love The Traditional songs & the traditional singers, whilst most of The Revival leaves me cold. Why is this??

A product of the revival? Hardly, Jim - albeit with very significant exceptions as I say. Otherwise the rest of your post paraphrases pretty much what I've been saying on this thread all along.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Smedley
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 07:05 AM

Post-Revival...Neo-Tradition....you do love a bit of Attempted Category Coinage don't you??

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 07:01 AM

Two things here Howard;
Much of what is being pirated here is derived from traditional sources, now matter how far they have been 'adapted'.









"We're talking here about musical products created at no little expense"
Sorry Howard - for me it's a fine line between what you described and taking the songs of field singers and singing them, issuing them on albums, publishing them, without their knowledge, permission or payment - and often without even acknowledgement.
The case of John Reilly that I mentioned above is not typical, but it is indicitive of prevailing attitudes.
On the other hand I do get evry, very, very, very very.... bored with our poster's "nuffing to do wiv me guv" constant whining about a revival he appears to despise but is a product of himself - or are we witnessing a magnificent display of self-flagelation.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 06:53 AM

Kevin's post back there makes for sobering reading. This is the plunder we're talking about. It now resides in ossuaries, well out of reach of the very people it was filched off in the first place, accessible only to a select few for an academic research entirely removed from the cultural jouissance that gave rise to the songs in the first place.

Howard - the only way musicians can have absolute control over their work is to make very sure that no one else gets to hear it - that they never record it, never publish it, and never release it. Least ways then they will be certain that people won't be ripping them off simply by showing an interest in it.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 06:33 AM

Can we assume that you don't sing traditional songs - or do you pay for all the traditional songs that you use (maybe a donation to the National Sound Archive or C# House)?

To the Post-Revivalist Traditional Songs are seen in terms of both their contemporary currency & immediate cultural relevance which has long out-grown the structures of The (so-called) Revival. The songs are now part and parcel of a Neo-Tradition which is just as vibrant & diverse & idiosyncratic as the old one and owes nothing to The (so-called) Revival*, the National Sound Archive or else anything done at C# House with the possible exception of the recording of Bright Phoebus.      

"Thou shall not rip off revival singers - though it doesn't matter too much with source singers".

To the Post-Revivalist the term source singer is anathema; Traditional Singer does just fine & accords respect where respect is due, without the wretched implication that the mastery of the Traditional Singers serves merely as a source for the songs sung properly by the folk enthusiasts & professionals of The (so-called) Revival.

* There will always be exceptions; the great voices and passionate souls of (say) Ewan MacColl and Peter Bellamy will ring forever in iconic resplendence however so flawed their ultimate scheme, or else tragically under-valued by the very scene they created in the first place. Such strident idiosyncratic genius will always be acknowledged & welcomed by the Post-Revival. Seamus Ennis and Jim Eldon are, likewise, Post-Revival Icons.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Howard Jones
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 06:15 AM

With respect, Jim, that's a sightly different situation. We're talking here about musical products created at no little expense in the hope of achieving a commercial return, which are being given away by others who have no rights to do so, and against the wishes of the people who created and own that product.

The issue of whether traditional sources were exploited by collectors is an important question, but perhaps one for a different thread. In any event, I don't see how it affects the subject under discussion. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Crowsis'
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 06:13 AM

"Thou shall not rip off revival singers - though it doesn't matter too much with source singers".

Jim, I think you've misinterpreted SO'P's meaning there.

As for myself, as stated upthread, I did rip off a handful of 60's revival albums last year, simply in order to hear renditions of traditional songs - so I could learn some myself.

I thought of it as err akin to 'borrowing' the songs from those who had recorded them, pretty much in the same way that revival singers themselves had done so from source singers.

I must confess that I didn't feel terribly guilty about it.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Kevin Sexton
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 06:06 AM

On the subject of source singers....
Earlier in this thread, somebody mentioned all the Trailer/Leader recordings locked away and inaccessible. The same is true of field recordings in the BBC Sound Archive. They are available for listening only at the British Library, at Cecil Sharp House and some at Birmingham City Library (Charles Parker Archive). The only way of obtaining copies is from the British Library who will make copies for you, provided you have written authority from the BBC. Now, this 'written authority' takes the form of a 'licence' which, for the dozen or so items that I am interested in, would cost between £1500-3000. A little prohibitive.

The song recordings I am interested in were made in the 1950s by Seamus Ennis (and in one case by Peter Kennedy). I understand that the singers were asked to 'sign away' any rights in the recordings at the time. Peter Kennedy (Folktrax) published three on CD and a few more on vinyl earlier. None, of course, are still available.

The BBC recordings in question are:

Amos Beckett (recorded 1952 - Winslow, Bucks) singing – The Broken Token; The Robber [aka The Gallows Tree – perhaps Maid Freed From The Gallows?]; Three Poachers; Watercress Girl; Wild Rover.
Ted Lambourne (recorded 1952 – North Marston, Bucks) singing - Blackberry Grove; Herring Song; Old Johnny Bigger; Won't You Buy A Broom?
Ted Keen (recorded 1952 – North Marston, Bucks) singing Maid Freed From The Gallows.
Mrs C A Perry (recorded 1954 – Loughton, nr Bletchley, Bucks) singing May-Day Carol. (There is also a recording of her describing May-Day local customs.)
Mary (May) Bennell (recorded 1954 – Amersham, Bucks) singing - Barbara Allen; Farmyard Song (aka The Little Cock or Farmer's Boy); May-Day Carol. (The Charles Parker Collection also lists a recording of The Hungry Fox.)


For many years I have been a resident of north Buckinghamshire, noted, I fear, for its dearth of traditional song. (Indeed, all the famous collectors seem to have bypassed it completely.)    Most of these recordings were made within 4 miles of me, the rest within 20 miles. There are Becketts, Keens and Lambournes in my locality and some of these may well be relations of the performers (all now long dead). They may well be able to provide me with information on these people which I could put together in some form of presentation for local people/voluntary organisations, as a glimpse of the 'living traditions' that survived in the local area not so very long ago. The Buckinghamshire County Archive is very interested in having such information, though do not have 'the budget' to obtain the recordings.

If anybody can help in any way, please contact me out of the glare of public gaze at [e-mail].

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 05:55 AM

"or the wanton plundering of The Revival."
'The mice are at it again!!
Can we assume that you don't sing traditional songs - or do you pay for all the traditional songs that you use (maybe a donation to the National Sound Archive or C# House)?
An elderly fiddler once told us the the music started going downhill when money became the issue.
It seems that, according to the tenor of this thread, the present revival commandment is "Thou shall not rip off revival singers - though it doesn't matter too much with source singers".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Timothy Claypole
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 04:01 AM

If you ask me all music should be free except for my music which is £4.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 06:08 PM

If you ask me such wanton piracy is endemic in the nature of Folk Music, be it terms of the pure wildfire process of The Tradition or the wanton plundering of The Revival.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Chairman Miao
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 05:32 PM

On the musician making the decision: All I can do is point y'all to some lengthy essays from Gerd Leonhard about "The End of Control."

http://www.mediafuturist.com/the-end-of-control-essays.html

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Goose Gander
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 05:07 PM

"But I think the crucial thing here is that the musician needs to be the one to make the decision as to whether or not they wish to make their music available for free download or not."

Precisely.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Maryrrf
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 05:02 PM

There are some good points made on this thread, and I did appreciate the thought that went into the 'guests' who regularly download music for free. It may or may not be true that downloading doesn't affect sales, it may be that it is good publicity, etc. But I think the crucial thing here is that the musician needs to be the one to make the decision as to whether or not they wish to make their music available for free download or not. For someone to decide that another person's music should be made available for free doesn't seem right to me.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Folknacious
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 04:56 PM

as far as the distribution costs of a digital download are concerned, would be good to know how they are other than minimal (50 MB worth of space on a server and costs of upload). or is there more to it than that?

Well I'm a little bit out of the loop here, but what I understand from people "in the biz" is that the distributors who farm out digital recordings to all the various sites like iTunes, eMusic, Napster etc take a cut, and the sites themselves take a cut, just the same as distributors of real records. Just the same as I believe only a bit over 4 quid finds its way back to a label whose CD is sold for 10 quid after the VAT, shop cut and distributor cut have been removed, out of which they have to pay recording costs, artist & writer royalties and general overheads. So it seems to me that if you give downloads away for next to nothing, there's only a minor percentage of next to nothing to pay for that stuff, so nothing very ambitious is likely to get recorded in future. We'll be left with the bedroom types doing vanity productions with Garageband, which I'm sure will make the puritans around these parts very happy but not me. I quite like ambitious, well produced music.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,David E.
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 04:16 PM

I can see the points that everyone has made here but I have to say that if I were a working musician, someone selling my rare and impossible to find vinyl record for some insane amount of money on ebay would bother me more than someone downloading the same for free.

David E.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 01:23 PM

Assume 50 downloads. That may not mean a lot to Radiohead but as a proportion of a run of 500 CDs it's a significant loss.

You're assuming they would have bought the CD in the first place, Howard! A download does not automatically equal the loss of a sale though this seems to be what people are suggesting here. I think the issue here is the artist feeling deprived because their vanity expects payment for their hard work, which may, or may not, run contrary to the spirit of folk I normally espouse, but certainly runs contrary to the way the Download Community relates to music both pragmatically and philosophically.

I'm not advocating anything here by the way, as certain people seem to think, just reporting on basic realities.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Howard Jones
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 11:30 AM

"the downloads won't effect your material sales in the slightest"
How can you possibly know that? Belief in human nature is one thing, but it stretching credulity to imagine that the only people who will download it will be those who would never have paid for it. Assume 50 downloads. That may not mean a lot to Radiohead but as a proportion of a run of 500 CDs it's a significant loss.

Anyway, I thought the point being made was that there may be losses from individual downloads but the benefits from spreading the word about someone's music will outweigh these. This may or may not be true - I suspect a lot will depend on the individual artist.

"a request to the people involved is all it takes for them to take it down"
That's true of THTM, however there are other sites which make it very clear they have no intention of complying with any such requests, ever. I won't name the site, but the copies of its replies to such requests on its "legal threats" page I find quite offensive in their total lack of respect for the musicians whose work it rips off.

It still leaves the onus on the artist to discover which sites are hosting his music and to make the request.

"it could well take on a life of its own well beyond your control"
That's certainly the reality. Of course it was always the case ever since the cassette tape, but its impact now is potentially far greater. The point is, it's beyond the artist's control only because people deliberately choose to ignore the artist's rights.

It appears to me that it is the small-scale music producers, such as Ralphie or Anne Lister, who are the ones who have most to lose and who are least able to prevent it, or exploit it in other ways - hardly the spirit of folk you are usually so keen to espouse.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 08:38 AM

I'm in exactly the same position as you, Ralphie - but the point being made here is that the downloads won't effect your material sales in the slightest - assuming that happens anyway, in which case, as has been shown, if you're not happy with that a request to the people involved is all it takes for them to take it down. They aren't doing it to defraud or capitalise - they're doing it for the simple love of the music, much as we all are one would hope! Thing is, once something is out there it becomes part of the common cultural lore and it could well take on a life of its own well beyond your control, albeit for the very best of reasons.

But then again, I'm just a naturally optimistic, half-full fun kind of guy who believes the best about people, and music, in the sure faith that 1) the essence of Folk is the intersecting of the collective with the individual which is the very wellspring of The Tradition, and 2) Chaos is the generative force of the universe...

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 07:28 AM

Well yes I have read them. And there is a lot of sense spoken there. Thanks to the two posters for their thoughts, and I can see what they're saying.
My problem is this.
I have just produced a 17 track CD of Concertina playing. (so we are talking niche marketing here)
All done at home, No record label, No promotion input, No distribution deal.
It's just myself, hoping to earn a little bit of cash to help with the pension. All production costs paid by me.
Let's say I do a gig. sell one copy of this CD. (£10).
That CD is then uploaded onto a website. People download it for free.
What do I do with the other 499 copies, that cost me possibly £800 to manufacture?
I'm not Bono, or Sting. (thank God!)
I'm a retired person, just using my abilities to make a bit of cash.
Thats all. And I really don't want my work being handed out to the world for free,
(and if that makes me an Angel of Anal Copy Righteosness then so be it. How offensive)
I made something. I reserve the right to sell it. On my terms. Not just give it away.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 06:54 AM

Two bang-on posts there from TIP & Kevin - let's hope the Angels of Anal Copy-Righteousness take time to read them!

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Kevin Scott
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 09:25 PM

I would like to offer a perspective from someone who is both a recording musician AND someone who downloads music without paying. I am Canadian, 42 years old.

I am a regular over at THTM and even though I considered myself pretty well-read in terms of British folk before I discovered that page, it opened up a world of music that I either didn't know existed, or DID know existed but could never locate. Anne Lister has given you one perspective on how someone who had their material uploaded without permission to THTM feels; I'm going to give you the other one.

I play in a band called Mr. Pine. Coincidentally, someone made our 2008 album available for upload on THTM and I found out about it naturally. Rather than get upset, I embraced the move and to my delight, sales exploded, we got some enthusiastic emails, and hits to our website went crazy. I spent the next couple weeks mailing copies to international customers. So to anyone who says your sales don't increase when you make your album available for free, I'm proof that sometimes they do. And our album had done pretty well, charting on college stations and getting national attention. Rather than scream and threaten THTM, I was grateful to them, and still am.

Some people are making the observation that it's still illegal. Well, that depends on where you live; our Canadian laws at one time wouldn't go for that. But my main response to that is that just because it's illegal doesn't make it wrong.

The law tells me that I should have to pay for everything I download by a recording artist. But here's an example of where the law makes no sense: When I was 12 or so I loved the Moody Blues song "Nights in White Satin" and I bought the 45. As I became more of a fan of the Moody Blues, I bought a greatest hits package which also contained the song. Later, I bought the studio album on which it was originally released. Then they issued it on CD. Then they issued it on a deluxe SACD. So now I've bought the song five times legally. At what point have I earned a free download of it? Just because the format has changed, should I have to pay again and again?

Another thing that I disagree with is the idea that if you download it, that makes you a thief. Not so. If you download it, keep it and never buy a proper copy, you HAVE stolen it - I'm not going to argue with that. But what about people like myself, who use it as a try-before-you-buy process? I download, listen, and if I don't like it, I delete it, and if I do, I buy it? Am I a thief? Sites like THTM have only ever made me purchase more music, and my CD racks have several thousand now. I do sleep well at night. I don't like being lumped in with people who don't pay for it, even if we've obtained it the same way.

So is it fair to assume that everyone who downloads it is stealing it outright? And, legal or not, what about the different ways this is BENEFITTING the artist? The THTM scenario put our music in the hands of people who never would have heard it otherwise. I am not going to CHARGE them to find out about it; they'd never bother! And how many times was I burned as a kid when I heard one song by an artist, liked it, bought the album, then found the rest of the album was terrible?

(I'm also a college radio DJ, and will play things I've downloaded on the air, giving them exposure they might not have had - another benefit.)

This is a technology that isn't going to go away; I think artists would do themselves a great favour to find ways to make it work for them, rather than insult people interested enough to have a listen and call them thieves. I can appreciate that some people would like to have their permission given first; but from where I sit, as an artist, I don't personally feel the need to give people permission to do something that I think is far more beneficial than detrimental.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,T.I.P.
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 06:33 PM

This is a very long thread about a topic that seems to keep coming up in different places. At the risk of saying something that's already been said, but with the possibility that it's from a different perspective, here are some extracts of a discussion I posted elsewhere a year ago about this sort of thing.

Now, just to let you all know, I'm probably a lot different from you. I'm 25 years old. I'm American. I started downloading music 10 years ago. At that time, I was downloading things like Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead. And heavy metal. The sort of thing you're into at 15. I found some private servers, and was able to listen to people I'd heard of but never been able to listen to. By the time I was 18 I discovered bands like the Incredible String Band. I was leaving heavy metal and headed firmly in the direction of folk. In the college years I was exposed to lots of different sorts of music though friends who would share their collections with me. Jazz, blues, indie, avantgarde. I would browse record stores from time to time and when I had cash (which was rare, being an art student), I would buy something in the field I'd recently discovered. I became obsessed with John Fahey, delved into his roots, and turned on a lot of classmates to his stuff. Thanks to illegal downloading sites I got to hear all the great old dead raw blues guys - guys like Son House and Bukka White and M. John Hurt and Skip James. They inspired me to pick up the guitar and start learning it.

I wanted to hear more stuff from Britain & Ireland, but I just couldn't find any. Eventually I found The Folk Box (Topic or something? 4 discs) on a torrent or private server or something. It was like a whole new world opening. I'd never heard of people like Nic Jones or Richard Thompson before coming across THTM. And I'd never heard of THTM before trying to find info on some of the artists featured on The Folk Box. I'd never heard of any of the artists there because in a lot of cases their music wasn't released in the States, or if it was it happened before I was born. In fact, The only folk music from across the pond I'd heard was the Clancy Brothers, and that off some greatest hits CD for which they probably received very little (RIP Liam). And after my curiosity was piqued by THTM and other sites, I looked around in the local record shop, and all I could find from across the pond was British Invasion stuff. Thanks to online music sharing, my interest had expanded beyond what the record shop could provide. Eventually, I found music sharing communities and started my own blog as a way of piquing the interest of others and expanding their musical horizons, and sharing music that I treasured with others who may not have access to it. And in return I have been given exposure to (and illegally downloaded music from all corners of the world: obscure Indian Classical vocalists and veena-ists, Alan Lomax collections, flamenco, field recordings from Africa, gamelan music, Irish music, Chinese classical music, prophetic street-composers from New York, Brazillian guitarists, American old-timers, and yes, British folk music too.). And people all over the world have been able to hear music from my corner, which they would not have heard of otherwise. I may not have bought any Indian Classical cds and my friends in India may not have bought any bluegrass & blues. But our tastes are expanding, and we continue to support the music around us and buy cds, and if we get the opportunity to see a musician from a genre we've been turned onto, we'll probably go. Now, have any of these musicians lost anything as a result of my practices?

Clearly not. But, you will ask, have any of them gained? Well, yes. I couldn't say that all of them have, but hell, half the music I get is from artists whose work has outlived them, may they rest in peace. But right now I'm living in Ireland. Recently Mozaik (world fusion band with Andy Irvine, Donal Lunny, Bruce Molsky, eastern european & dutch multi-instrumentalists) did a tour in Ireland. I'd heard of them because I'd pirated both their albums, and was really excited by them. So excited, in fact, that I told everyone I knew in the area about the gig, (none of whom had heard of the band, even though it's their generation) got them to come, paid something like 60 euros getting tickets for people, and the people who I brought bought albums. Did I ever pay for the albums I downloaded? Nope. Did I end up giving more money to the band than whatever royalties those albums would have brought? Hell yeah. I should add that I was one of the only people in the audience under 30, and possibly the only one who had ever heard the gadulka before (thank you music sharing community). As has been said before, the means of music distribution is changing. As is the means of information distributing. Maybe if there were more people blogging Mozaik, they'd be drawing a younger audience and maybe even playing stadium shows instead of, say, Coldplay. They certainly have the talent.

I remember a story about how in 1969, Rolling Stone magazine offered to send a copy of Mississippi Fred McDowell's album I Do Not Play No Rock and Roll for free to anyone who wrote to them and asked. And this single act probably caused more rock and roll fans to discover the blues (and subsequently purchase more blues albums, attend concerts, etc.) than any other act of marketing. [i may have some of the details wrong on this account, but you get the point]

Personally, I have become a much more conscious and avid consumer of music thanks to "music piracy". You see, because of music sharing, my interest in and exposure to music has grown 100-fold. If I had to pay $15 every time I saw something interesting and wanted to give it a listen, my musical horizons would have stayed pretty limited. By indulging and supporting my curiosity, the pirates of the inter-seas have made of me a musical connisseur, where once there was just passing interest. Forums and 'sharity' blogs have particularly helped to rouse my interest in unknown artists and forgotten genres. And, since the big-names are readily available for piracy, the obvious choice is to support the lesser-known and local artists, or those who have really given their lives to their music.

In fact, I feel that by distributing the music of Son House and Blind Willie Johnson, I may be helping to open up a whole new world of experience for someone who is used to more polished music, and they may begin to appreciate the raw emotions of flamenco music or Greek rebetica. By posting Harry Partch and Tom Cora, I may turn a few people on to a world of improvisational and microtonal avantgarde music. Growth comes through exposure and experience. You can never know how these things will change someone. They've certainly changed my life. Incidentally, I've received letters from record companies thanking me for the article I wrote (which included a download), and asking me if they could quote it in a booklet for the artist's upcoming release. I've also received numerous requests from musicians to post their material on my blog because they wanted the exposure. And I know more than one band who went from total obscurity to international tours as a result of internet distribution and sharing, some of it legal, most of it not.

Another story, more recent. Radiohead, one of the most intelligent contemporary 'rock' bands, released their most recent album for download from their website before it was released in physical form. Radiohead allowed users to pay however much they liked, including nothing. They made £10 Million or so, on an average of £7.00 or so per user. And none of that money got taken by a middle-man in the form of a retail store or a record company. Now, Radiohead is a big-name band with millions of fans. But the principle works the same for small-name artists. And it shows that people who download can be generous, especially if the artist is generous first.

You see, Radiohead realized that even if you issue an album conventionally, even with copy-protection embedded in the CD, it still gets posted on the internet within a week of release. So why not embrace the new system of music-distribution that is evolving, and experiment to see if it has an equal or greater capacity to support the artists than the (outdated?) distribution system of record labels and retail shops.

Remember, the music industry tried to sue radio on the same grounds of copywright infringement. Eventually, it learned to work with radio's inherent marketing capabilities. And the existence of recorded music itself almost destroyed the profession of composer (the music industry now has to give money to a fund that supports living composers). And do you know who got the laws on copyright and intellectual property to be so strict in the first place? Walt Disney. One of the biggest crooks of the 20th century, I'd say.

And by some people's definition (say, Michael Cooney's), "If you know who wrote it, it's not folk music." So with all this discussion of royalty payments, intellectual property, etc, and this being a folk music forum, the issue could be raised that a great number of these songs are (or should be) in the public domain, and belonging to 'the people' anyway. Now, I wonder how many royalty dollars are going to some AP Carter fund somewhere, for new performances of songs that he neither wrote nor performed, but merely 'stole' from neighbors in the hills and had the sense to copyright when his family recorded them. In fact the whole folk process is a process of 'stealing' - ideas, techniques, songs, melodies, etc, and that's how it lives and grows.

Field recordings and folk song archives should be available to the public for free. Full stop. The library of congress, the Alan Lomax Collection. They belong to the people. Lomax was publicly funded. And in many cases, the musicians got nothing. When he recorded Son House and Willie Brown the unit of payment was a bottle of coca-cola. Willie Brown got the coke and Son House got nothing. And Rounder wants to charge us for it? Now the question has been raised "but who would spend countless hours ripping these old archive recordings and making them available, when there's no money in it?" Well, there's already a group of people doing essentially that: bloggers. Let Topic hand over its vault of unissued recordings to dedicated fans, collectors and bloggers who will do the work for the love of it. They even make homemade covers. And they will be able to distribute them and generate interest much better than the labels do (they already do this). And you will have a huge resource to folk music, which will serve musicians and create fans, saving both the trouble of buying the works of dead people and liberate them to spend that hard-earned cash in support of living musicians.

And if we can do that, maybe we can take a tip from organic farming and it's methods of CSA ("Community-Supported Agriculture") and generate a scheme of "CSM" (community-supported musicians), like France does for its artists, so that they are freed of the continuing struggle of trying to make a living with music in a crazy market economy, and instead are given a sufficient and consistent amount of money or food or housing or whatever is really needed to keep creating a better musical world for us.

Now, those are all issues of rights, morality, and money. I realize that these issues go deep with people. I don't pretend to have definitive answers to them, but I've tried to demonstrate my thoughts around them. I invite responses that confirm or contradict what I've said.

But I'd especially invite any responses that seriously consider the possibilities that the evolving world of information- and music-distribution offer, and look for ways to make the best of it. We've had 150 messages arguing about ethics, which doesn't change the situation a bit. Isn't it time we started looking for solutions? This is the largest online folk-music community in the world that I'm aware of. There's huge potential to actually do something positive instead of just getting upset, dontcha think?

Like, when a musician finds their album being downloaded on a blog, instead of saying "take this down immediately or I'll take legal action," what about saying "this album is still available at ___, how about just giving 2 tracks as a sample and providing a link" or "would you make a post of my upcoming tour dates so that all the people who read your blog and have been turned on to my music will be able to come see me live?" When you treat people like criminals, they behave that way. When you treat them like friends, they'll go out of their way to support you.

I'd say in my case, music piracy has transformed me from being an ignorant consumer to being a highly informed, broad-tasted connoisseur and collector and even expert in some arenas of music. I spend more on music now than I ever have, and pirate more too. And because I've downloaded for so long and I know all the right places to look, in most cases I can choose whether to get an album for free or to buy it. So I am free to support the artists I feel are most worthy (Jody Stecher springs to mind). And I do, because I realize that by supporting them, they can continue to make, perform, and record music. But in order for me to be able to really appreciate Jody Stecher (who I first heard on a download), I had to have already been turned onto bluegrass, old-timey music, Celtic music, Indian classical music, etc., which never would have happened without the online 'sharity' community. I know that as a musician it can be incredibly angering to find someone else giving away something you've worked so hard to create. But try to see it in the bigger picture, and maybe you can swim with the current rather than against it.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: brezhnev
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 02:55 PM

folknacious
sorry, i didn't make myself clear. i was talking about an album that had already been recorded and had previously come out on LP, tape and CD. so, no recording costs and no digital transfer costs. and there are loads and loads of them for sale on the web.

as far as the distribution costs of a digital download are concerned, would be good to know how they are other than minimal (50 MB worth of space on a server and costs of upload). or is there more to it than that?

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Folknacious
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 12:29 PM

As far as i can work out, the costs of the digital download version are: recording - nil, manufacturing - nil, distribution - almost nothing, artist royalties (almost nothing). Hmmmm.

So that's where it has got to, a belief that it costs nothing to record a track that will be digitally downloaded, and that there are virtually no distribution costs either.

It's very good to know that music has now become so devalued by the activities of the thieves, pirates and bootleggers that everybody else in the music industry has decided to work for nothing. I was so inspired by this discovery that I thought I'd go and start recording my first album now, but it seems that nobody's told Abbey Road - the man there was quite rude in fact.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Howard Jones
Date: 15 Jan 10 - 12:12 PM

Of course it's theorising, in the absence of statistics it's difficult to know the actual impact. But it seems probable that if something is available to the wide world then more copies will be made than if it's just left to people passing around copies between friends. It seems to me to be equally "hysterical theorising" to assume that music sharing is benefiting musicians by making them more widely known.

It's one thing for a well-known band to shrug their shoulders and accept downloads as free publicity to attract people to live gigs. For most folk artists that's not really a solution. Despite all the protests from music sharers that they're really doing musicians a favour, it's noticeable that it's the musicians themselves, to whom every CD sale is significant, who are objecting.

I'll say it again, if you want to discover new music then most musicians have examples freely available on the internet - on their own websites, Myspace or Youtube. It's not necessary to download a pirated album.